The Ruins of Pompeii

I was walking in the ruins of Pompeii a few months ago. It was late July, during a shade-less afternoon. Pompeii was one of the last destinations of my Italy trip. I have traveled from north to south for the past three weeks, and have seen a lot of good art, but nothing really inspired new work so strikingly as the ruins of Pompeii.

I was glad that all the artifacts were either excavated or looted, because the bareness of the architecture was honest and un-staged. Moving past the roofless walls down a kilometer of streets that were simultaneously anonymous and specific, layers of rooms, common halls, and courtyards shifted past me. I witnessed multiples at the same time, a strange clash of vacancy and society. The rectangles and squares in the walls formed infinite configurations of filmic compositions. It was the highlight of my year.

The next day, I began to investigate precisely why I was so moved. I listed several topics that have always fascinated me and driven me to self-expression. I wrote down in my sketchbook this response:

This real-life cross-section of an entire society is something that has fascinated me since childhood. I was perpetually drawn to it with unexplainable force. As I aged, this attraction has not subsided. If anything, it grew stronger and more complicated. Even now, I am fixated in exploring space, breaks and continuums in space, simultaneous actions within and around spaces, visible and invisible sense of space. I fully recognize my passion, but rarely asked why. It’s been with me for so long. Standing against the ruins, I suddenly began to wonder – it was the first time I have been immersed within a dreamscape-like arena where my usual sense of spatiality was challenged. It has never happened before…where I could so clearly see multiple planes of divisions simultaneously. I could visualize the people that used to possess these spaces moving about, all together, in one continuous web of interspersed strings. The story of the place suddenly becomes about the inter-relationships, the energy of transitions, as opposed to any singular object. The simultaneity of actions triggered by multiple people is a form of calm rhythm.

After this reflection, works that I have never considered personal have become quiet intimate. My film work attempts to describe the conflict between isolation and coexistence. The situation is often mundane, or at least nothing “happens.” The dramatic tension in the narrative exists not in the subjects, but in the physical void between them.